Chapter 8 - The Dinner on the Sixtieth Floor
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By seven o’clock that evening, Consigliere Gallo had confessed everything before Dante even had to open his toolkit at Pier 84.
Terrified that Julian Vane’s takeover of the West Side would expose the two million dollars Gallo and Richie Grasso had secretly embezzled from senile old Don Bellini’s accounts over the past two years—and knowing that Lorenzo Morelli in New Jersey had offered five hundred thousand dollars for any leverage that could embarrass or weaken Julian Vane before Tuesday’s Harbor Commission vote—Gallo had tipped off Morelli that Julian had suddenly put a twenty-eight-year-old waitress from Bellini’s Chophouse under personal protection.
Within an hour of Gallo’s confession, Julian’s men had seized Gallo’s offshore accounts, handed Gallo over to the Bellini cousins in Brooklyn to answer for robbing his own Don, and sent a crystal-clear message across the Hudson River to Lorenzo Morelli by blowing up three of Morelli’s empty smuggling warehouses in Newark at sunset.
Yet Julian refused to let Clara or Lily leave the sixtieth-floor fortress until the Harbor Commission vote was finished on Tuesday.
At eight-thirty that night, after Lily had gone to sleep downstairs on fifty-nine following three hours of studying anatomy flashcards, Clara walked out onto the enclosed, heated winter garden terrace of Julian’s penthouse, wearing a soft navy cashmere sweater and dark slacks that the housekeeper had left in her guest room.
The rain from the night before had cleared into a freezing, diamond-sharp Manhattan night, the Empire State Building glowing white and gold against the black sky sixty stories up.
In the center of the glass-enclosed terrace, surrounded by potted olive trees and flickering candles, a small table was set for two—and standing at the open stainless-steel teppanyaki grill built into the terrace counter, wearing a black henley shirt with the sleeves pushed up over his muscled forearms, was Julian Vane.
He was searing two thick, two-inch-cut prime bone-in ribeyes over open white oak embers, the rich aroma of rosemary, crushed garlic, and clean aged beef filling the warm air.
Clara stopped in the doorway, a genuine, surprised laugh escaping her throat. "Don't tell me the head of the Vane syndicate cooks his own dinner."
Julian glanced over his shoulder, the harsh lines around his mouth softening instantly as he saw her standing in the candlelight.
"When I was nineteen and learning the shipping business on the docks in Genoa before my father died, I lived above a butcher’s shop for two years," Julian said, plating the two perfectly charred steaks alongside roasted baby potatoes and pouring two glasses of deep red Barolo. "And after last night, I figured I owed you at least one ribeye that didn't come out of a plastic bus-tub."
Clara walked over to the table and sat down across from him, her stomach giving a small,traitorous rumble at the smell of real food after twenty-four hours of running on adrenaline and hospital coffee.
She took a bite of the steak and closed her eyes for a second. It was melt-in-your-mouth perfection. "Okay. If the shipping empire ever falls through, Chef Mateo might have competition."
Julian watched her across the candlelight, leaning back in his chair with his glass of Barolo in his hand, his trimmed dark beard and piercing blue eyes making him look so dangerously magnetic that Clara felt a warm flush creeping up her neck.
"Why were you really walking around Hell’s Kitchen in muddy boots and a torn jacket last night, Julian?" she asked quietly, setting her fork down. "You could have sent ten auditors in suits to check Bellini’s Chophouse."
"If I walk into a restaurant in a five-thousand-dollar suit with four bodyguards," Julian said, his voice low and thoughtful, "Richie Grasso kisses my ring, serves me the best cut in the cooler, and smiles to my face while robbing the waitresses in the back room. Men only show you who they really are when they think you can't do anything to them."
He leaned forward on one forearm, his arctic-blue gaze locking onto hers across the small table.
"And women too," Julian murmured softly. "For the last five years, since I took the seat at the head of my family, every woman who has ever smiled at me at a charity gala or a dinner party was looking at the Vane name, the buildings, or the power. Last night, you thought I was a guy who slept under the West Side Highway and spent his last two hundred dollars on a warm meal... and you apologized to me for your manager’s manners and risked your father’s hospital bed to keep me from getting sick."
Clara’s breath caught in her throat as he reached across the table, his warm, calloused fingers resting lightly over the back of her hand beside her wineglass.
"You have no idea how dangerous that makes you to a man like me, Clara," Julian whispered.
May you like
"Dangerous?" she repeated softly, her pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips. "I’m an event planner and a waitress."
"You’re the only person in this city I didn't have to buy or terrify to trust," Julian said, his thumb tracing the delicate bone of her wrist. "And if Lorenzo Morelli thinks putting a target on you is how he gets to me... by Tuesday night, I’m going to make sure the whole East Coast knows what happens when someone looks in your direction."
